about turning back. The voyagers had imbibed some of the spirit of the intrepid and irresistable leader as well as much of the spirit they carefully packed from one portage to another as a most previous treasure; and on the 17th day of June, 1793, after cutting a passage through drift wood and underbrush for a mile and dragging their canoe and goods through a swamp, they landed on the margin of the Frazer river of British Columbia. Simon Frazer for whom the river was named, after this route had been opened by MacKenzie, afterwards passed over it and pronounced it the worst piece of forest traveling in North America. We here include a copy of the map the explorer made of this region, which not only shows by the dotted line his course from the Frazer river across to Salmon bay on the Straits of Georgia. MacKenzie did not follow the Frazer to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia, or he would not have dotted in the lower course of the river as entering the ocean down by our Saddle mountain near Astoria. But this mistake arising wholly from making a short cut across the land to the ocean instead of following the river to its mouth, was confirmed by Lewis and Clark who also supposed that MacKenzie had been upon the upper waters of the Columbia. Simon Frazer made the same mistake when he first saw the Frazer, and remained thus mistaken until 1808 when he followed the river down to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia, three hundred miles north of the mouth of the Columbia.
Having given important facts developed by the explorations of the French and Canadians, we may now turn our attention to the Americans. The next year after Lewis and Clark started with their world-renowned expedition to the Pacific coast. Lieutenant Zebulon Pike of the United States army was ordered by the U. S. government to explore the sources of the Mississippi river, and established friendly relations with the Indians whose territory had but lately been included within the boundaries of the new born republic. Taking twenty men from his military camp near St. Louis, and a keel-boat—no steamboats on the great river in those days—seventy feet in length. Pike ascended the Mississippi to its source and hoisted there the United States flag. This exploration, and this act of Pike's determined the point to which distance north the United States could, under treaty of peace with England, claim and maintain the northern boundary of this nation east of the Rocky mountains. Pike had not only settled that disputed point but he had made known the course of the river itself from St. Louis to its fountain head. Pike made other important explorations and discoveries among which is the mountain peak in Colorado, which bears his name. He also mapped the sources of the Platte, the Kansas and the upper reaches of the Arkansas rivers.
And now we reach a period when private enterprise enters the field, primarily for furs and trade with the Indians, yet making important discoveries, beneficial to the nation and useful to the western pioneers and especially to the emigrants to Oregon.
In 1808 the Missouri Fur Company was organized at St. Louis, by Manuel Lisa, a Spaniard. During the years 1809 and 10 Lisa sent out numerous parties and established trading posts at important points coming as far west as the head waters of Snake River; and here Alexander Henry, in charge of the post, erected the first house built within the Oregon country not given up to the British. In consequence of the hostility of the Indians and its great distance from the base of supplies, it was abandoned in 1810.
The next year after Lisa's venture. Captain Jonathan Winship of Brighton, Massachusetts, organized a trading expedition to the Columbia river by the way of Cape Horn, and two ships were secured, one of which the O'Cain, was commanded by himself, and the other the Albatross, was commanded by his brother Nathan Winship. They sailed from Boston July 6th, 1809, and the Albatross reached the mouth of the Columbia river May 25th, 1810, being over ten months on the way. The ship was provided with a complete outfit, and to her original company of twenty-five white men, were added twenty-
